Chapter 2

The Five Test Types

Smoke, load, stress, spike, soak — when to run each.

~21 min total3 lessonsAssignment

By the end of this chapter you'll be able to

Pick the right test for the question being asked
Define thresholds that fail the build on regression

Lessons

Module: Scenario types

Smoke + load tests

Sanity check + steady-state expected traffic.

7measy

Stress + spike tests

Push to breaking point; sudden traffic surges.

8mmedium

Soak test

Run for hours to catch leaks the short tests miss.

6mmedium

Chapter assignment

A 6-test suite

Build a k6 suite in `tests/k6/` with one script per scenario type (smoke, load, stress, spike, soak) plus a registration-flow scenario. Document what each tests in a README.

See success criteria

Lesson 1 takes ~7 min.

Start chapter

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ch.1: k6 Fundamentals ch.3: Finding the Bottleneck